‘I shall be proud to be your guide, Pasha. You would trust yourself there with me?’
‘Oh, my dear Wheatley, such things are not done now,’ smiled the Pasha. ‘You and I will settle our little difference another way. Have you been down since I came?’
‘No. I’ve had about enough of the passage,’ said I carelessly. ‘I should be glad never to see it again; but I must strain a point and go with you.’
‘Yes, you must do that,’ he answered. ‘How steep this hill is! Really I must be growing old, as Phroso is cruel enough to think!’
This conversation, seeming to fall in so pat with my musings, and indicating, if it did not state, that Mouraki treated the passage as a trifle of no moment, brought us to the outskirts of the wood. The cottage was close in front of us. We had passed only one sentry: the cordon was gone. This change struck me at once, and I remarked on it to Mouraki.
‘Yes, I thought it safe to send most of them away; there are one or two more than you see though. But he won’t venture back now.’
I smiled to myself. I was pleased again at my penetration; and in this instance, unlike the other at which I have hinted, I do not think I was wrong. The cordon had been here, then Constantine had; the cordon was gone, and I made no doubt that Constantine was gone also.
The front of the cottage was dark, and the curtains of the windows drawn, as they had been when I came before, on the night I killed Vlacho the innkeeper and fell into the hands of Kortes and Demetri. The whirligig had turned since then; for then this man Mouraki had been my far-off much-desired deliverer, Kortes and Demetri open enemies. Now Mouraki was my peril, Kortes my best friend, Demetri—well, what and whom had Panayiota meant?
‘Shall we go in?’ asked Mouraki, as we came to the house. ‘Stay, though, I’ll knock on the door with my stick. Madame Stefanopoulos is, no doubt, within. I think she will probably not have joined her husband.’
‘I imagine she’ll have heard of his escape with great regret,’ said I.